Review: Goodbye for Now: A Novel by @Laurie_Frankel

Sam Elling is a brilliant computer programmer. Working for a popular internet dating site, he has developed the perfect algorithm that brings together two extremely compatible people. Problem is – he’s so brilliant and so talented with this algorithm that he’s lost his job. What kind of dating site can remain profitable and charge monthly fees of people who’ve so easily found their match?

They don’t, so he’s unemployed.

Luckily, he’s deeply in love with Meredith – a co-worker at the same company, albeit in a different department – and he’ll figure it out. . . eventually.

When Meredith’s beloved grandmother dies suddenly, Sam finds a new outlet for his talents: RePose. An opportunity for those who’ve lost loved ones to reconnect. They use data from video chats, email histories, chat logs, and any kind of saved information that’s retrievable to re-create the person they’d like to connect with.

After a successful launch with Meredith’s “grandmother”, the two set forward to offer peace and closure to the world suffering in grief.

– No technology is perfect, and Sam and Meredith do their best to attack each glitch with grace and respect.
– Not everybody thinks this is a good idea.
– Unexpected (and unforeseeable) consequences emerge when the desperation to keep a connection after a loved one’s gone overrides someone’s good sense (think: parents of very sick children).

But what they never expected was that someone would eventually use this technology for the other.

Sam and Meredith are delicious characters whose stories and connection to each other are developed cleanly and at a very comfortable pace. No technical errors are present, and I am able to lose myself in this story. Emotions run high with empathy for the various grieving characters, and a slight undercurrent of desperation punctuate each sentence.

The end of this story is painful and wrecked with despair, but in a way that ties the entire story together: Do we do our best to circumvent nature with the power of our technology? Or is what’s never meant to last forever best left alone?